The Wire Service America Needed
The Associated Press and Reuters each had more than a century to get this right.
They failed.
When only 45% of Americans trust journalists to act in the public interest and 58% call them “biased,” what you're looking at is institutional collapse.
When veteran newsroom editors spend decades wishing their wire services would just do the basics—accuracy without agenda, taxpayer focus without foundation interference—you're looking at market opportunity.
At The Center Square, we built what they wouldn't - or couldn’t.
The Solutions Journalism Problem
For decades, mainstream government coverage typically operated from a simple premise—reporters worked for taxpayers, not for government officials or foundation program officers. Most city council meetings, statehouse budget fights, and federal regulations got filtered through the question that mattered: How does this affect the people paying for it?
Then solutions journalism gained prominence, backed by foundation funding, and priorities shifted. The Associated Press began forming partnerships that question editorial independence. In 2023, AP announced a collaboration with CBS News and the Solutions Journalism Network focusing on youth mental health—producing what critics describe as promotional stories about “zen dens” in Colorado schools and peer counseling programs in Los Angeles while often omitting costs, effectiveness data, or alternative approaches.
According to its own materials, AP’s Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative covers “systemic issues within local communities” by spotlighting preferred solutions rather than examining all available options. The taxpayer perspective took a backseat to advocacy.
In 2019, my team of veteran editors—people who'd spent careers using AP and Reuters copy before this introduction of solutions journalism entered the market—decided to build what we’d always wanted to receive: clean wire service fundamentals focused on the people that government actually serves.
What the Data Shows
Today, the platform we built, The Center Square, is accepted and republished by all genres of news publishers. This growth is not by accident. Six years after our founding, Pew Research Center’s recent study of over 9,000 Americans documented journalism’s credibility crisis—and validated our approach.
The trust numbers are devastating:
Only 45% of Americans have confidence journalists act in the public’s best interest
58% describe most journalists as “biased”
56% say journalists can’t separate personal views from reporting
49% say journalists are losing influence versus 15% gaining
What Americans actually want:
84% say journalists should “definitely report news accurately”
64% want journalists to “correct false information from public figures”
“Relatively few” want journalists expressing personal opinions
Top three important traits: honesty, intelligence, authenticity
We built The Center Square to deliver exactly this: Deliver straight news with Accuracy, Velocity, and Frequency. No staff-written opinion. No solutions journalism, and no hidden agendas. Instead readers receive short, important stories from statehouses, cities, and Washington, D.C.
The Market Response
This reader-first mindset grew The Center Square from zero outlet partners in 2019 to 1,330 today. News organizations serving American communities increasingly choose us, demonstrating strong market demand for our straightforward approach to government coverage focused on taxpayer impact in our accountability reporting.
To explain this growth, let me share a story:
When I was a publisher, the top of my subscriber “quit list,” those ending paid subscriptions, was typically led by “death,” a “move out” of the distribution market, or the rising “cost” of a daily subscription.
Today, we hear from executives, publishers, and broadcast leaders across the country that the top complaint they receive is what their readers are calling clear, left-leaning bias from the AP.
And, let’s face it, Reuters never was a meaningful U.S. wire service. Most of its customers are larger metropolitan papers. Very few local-market publishers and virtually zero local-market broadcasters subscribed to Reuters, whose content is incredibly dense, inside-baseball reporting through a European lens.
Local editors recognized clean wire copy when they saw it in The Center Square as the product they'd been seeking all along.
What Taxpayer Focus Actually Means
Consider AP’s approach to youth mental health coverage in the example above: telling stories about “zen dens” in Colorado schools and peer counseling programs in Los Angeles without articulating costs, comparative data on effectiveness, alternative approaches, or fiscal impact on taxpayers funding these programs.
A fact-forward approach to a story such as this would look like this: “School district allocates $180,000 for student mental health coordinator; per-pupil costs increase 2.1%; district cites pilot program data showing 15% reduction in counselor visits”
Compare those headlines to the solutions-journalism approach: “School creates innovative ‘zen den’ to support student wellness”
The first serves taxpayers with facts they need to evaluate government spending. The second serves an agenda, promoting predetermined solutions while ignoring fiscal reality.
People want to know what the program is going to cost, and who is going to pay for it. There is no journalistic justification for concealing that information.
Why Legacy Outlets Struggle to Course-Correct
When 58% of Americans describe journalists as “biased,” they’re identifying what appears to be a fundamental problem with advocacy journalism presented as objective reporting. When I see bias, this is where I believe the biggest gap lies between what the American public wants from journalism and what it receives from the legacy partners it no longer trusts.
Solutions journalism functions as advocacy journalism—it often starts with preferred outcomes and works backward to supporting narratives. It is the world that the journalist wants, rather than the world in which the journalist is practicing the craft.
AP’s collaboration with the Solutions Journalism Network exemplifies what critics see as the corruption of wire service principles. When nonprofit news organizations partner with advocacy groups focused on promoting “systemic solutions,” they risk abandoning journalistic neutrality for activism. The reward is being paid to play. That’s a risk we do not take and will not take because such coverage intentionally excludes balance, ignores contradictory data, and taints results by filtering information through predetermined conclusions.
And, again, that’s not journalism. That’s something entirely different. It’s playing a game with the reader. It doesn’t matter if the word “analysis” or “special report” sits atop the copy, or if the story is produced, as they so often are in the Seattle Times by a “lab” or “project” reporter, it’s disingenuous. It’s a mask over the truth.
We built The Center Square from scratch without these advocacy entanglements, allowing complete focus on what Pew Research documented Americans wanted: honest, authentic journalism that serves taxpayers over institutional agendas. The Center Square explicitly practices journalism, not advocacy—a distinction that appears to matter when 84% of Americans want accurate reporting without the opinion contamination that solutions journalism frequently produces.
The Pew Validation
Every element of our approach aligns with documented public preferences:
Honesty through transparency: We state our taxpayer focus upfront instead of claiming impossible neutrality while making biased editorial choices. We are intentional in speaking to both sides of the aisle in the work that we publish. Truth speaks loudest, and for itself.
Intelligence through relevance: Deep expertise in state and local government where policy most directly impacts citizens, matching Americans’ documented preference for “deep knowledge of topics covered” over institutional prestige.
Authenticity through acknowledgment: Honest perspective rather than false objectivity, delivering the authenticity Pew Research found Americans crave.
Accuracy without agenda: Factual reporting that 84% of Americans want, without the opinion mixing that “relatively few” want.
What We’ve Restored
The Center Square didn’t invent taxpayer-centric coverage—we restored emphasis on an approach that was once more common in American journalism. The approach that we take across the country is no different than the approach that the journalists who worked for me in the Chicago suburbs 20 years ago took on. It serves to create a clear transparency for We The People.
Traditional government reporting frequently emphasized fiscal impact and public accountability before many outlets adopted broader institutional missions.
Our growth from zero to 1,330 partners suggests American news consumers were ready for journalism to remember its core function: holding government accountable to the people who pay for it.
The Bottom Line
Pew Research Center’s data confirms what we experienced: Americans reject advocacy disguised as journalism. The rise of solutions journalism correlates with the documented credibility crisis. Solutions journalism in all forms is inherently biased, and it no longer slips past the American public.
Americans told researchers they want transparency about editorial perspective combined with rigorous factual standards—not false objectivity covering up advocacy missions.
The Center Square succeeded because we gave Americans what they told Pew they wanted: journalism that serves taxpayers by holding government accountable to the people who fund it.
Sometimes the most revolutionary act is returning to what actually worked. Check out this content for yourself by subscribing to The Center Square.
Chris Krug is the publisher of The Center Square newswire service. This Substack post was inspired by Pew Research Center’s August 2025 study “Americans’ Views of Journalists and Their Role in Society.” The Center Square’s growth from 0 to 1,330 partners reflects documented public demand for taxpayer-focused government accountability coverage. The Center Square is a 501(c) nonprofit, which does accept philanthropic support from Foundations. Editorial independence is a prerequisite for all incoming grants. Donor information is not shared with the newsroom.